Ranking your goals for your divorce attorney

In most divorce cases, there are lots of issues at stake. Unlike other areas of the law, in divorce law where the parties have children, the court will ultimately have to make a determination about:

Whether the divorce itself will take place (and in some cases, this might be at issue);

How all marital property and debt will be divided (from the house and the retirement account all the way down to the pots and pans);

How legal and physical custody will be ordered as part of the case;

The specific custody schedule, including the days of the week the kids will be with each parent, including summer and holidays;

The amount of child support that is being ordered, if any (including current and retraoctive);

How spousal support will work (including the amount and length of time or whether it will be ordered at all); and

How attorney’s fees and court costs will be apportioned.

With all of these issues at stake, it’s important that a party rank their most important priorities all the way down to their lease important priorities. It is important that this happen early in the representation.

Likewise, if a case goes to trial and cannot settle, the attorney is best able to know what evidence to put on, the order in which to put it on at trial and the time to spend on it based on the priorities of the client.

Divorce litigation is unique in that there are so many issues at stake. An attorney can realistically spend lots of time and energy in areas that might not be that important to a client if they do not know the client’s priorities. At the same time, a client can feel as if not enough time and energy is being spent in areas that are critical to them if their priorities are not made known.

This is exactly why sitting down and ranking priorities is an important task for a client to do from the very beginning. Then, if there are any questions or concerns, the attorney and the client can talk about it to make sure there is mutual understanding.